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Dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates in triple-well potentials

Dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates in triple-well potentials are well-suited model systems for periodic optical potentials with important contributions of the non-local and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction, which show a variety of effects such as self-organisation and formation of patterns. We address here a macroscopic sample of dipolar bosons in the mean-field limit. This work is based on the Gross-Pitaevskii description of dipolar condensates in triple-well potentials by Peter et al 2012 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 45 225302. Our analysis goes beyond the calculation of ground states presented there and clarifies the role of excited and metastable states in such systems. In particular, we find the formation of phases originating from the interplay of several states with distinct stability properties. As some of the phases are formed by metastable states special attention is paid to the characteristics of phase transitions in real-time and the dynamical stabilisation of the condensate.